


Inheritance

by flibbertygigget



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Activism, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, HIV/AIDS, Inheritance, M/M, Post-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 18:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18057368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flibbertygigget/pseuds/flibbertygigget
Summary: This is Jason's inheritance. What he kept, what he gave, and how he chose to use it.





	Inheritance

Jason Ginsberg knows that he's lucky.

He has a wonderful boyfriend whose T-cells are holding steady in spite of his HIV diagnosis. He has two godmothers who are always willing to talk him through his problems or at least feed him. He has a mother who cheers on his causes and a stepfather who is more than willing to financially support his "career" as an activist.

He knows he's a damn sight luckier than so many others.

Others like Whizzer, who died before AIDS was even called GRID, who was one of the first 500 to be diagnosed. Others like Dad, whose long, grueling illness ended with him bald and blind and gasping for breath amid constant pain. Others like the dozens of people he's seen die in the shelters or on the streets because their insurance was shit or nonexistent. Others like his boyfriend, who he knows is painfully aware that, without the AZT Jason's stepfather pays for, he'd be dead within a year.

Sometimes it's easy to lose sight of that, he'll admit. Sometimes you think about all the dying you've met and you end up in a bar, drinking until you puke your guts out in a filthy ally. Sometimes you look at the gun in your bedroom drawer and wonder what it would be like to see the scene turn to black.

But no. Jason knows he's lucky, and he's got to make his luckiness count for something. After all, he's not infected. He's got money and energy and time, so much time, enough time that it sometimes overwhelms him. So instead of giving into the urge to forget the things he's seen, he fights. He organizes protests and plans phone zaps and lights candles. He quilts and gets arrested, knowing that the time spent staring at the wall of his cell is only regrettable in that he could have been doing more.

He screws his boyfriend desperately, trying to make sure that they know every possible position of their bodies before their time runs out.

Back when Dad died, some lawyer insisted on going over the will with Mom and Mendel and Jason. He had called it their inheritance, and Jason had called him full of shit. Except for a few small things, the entire estate went to Jason - a bit depleted from all the medical bills, but a substantial amount nonetheless. Mom and Mendel had expected for him to use it on college, or else to blow it on girls and shoes and booze.

Jason had done neither of those things. Instead, he had donated to every activist organization that popped up in the city, as though he could stop a plague single-handed if he just paid enough. When that hadn't worked, he added his body into the bargain. He still doesn't know if things will ever be alright again.

There were things besides the money, too. Physical objects, as though Dad and Whizzer had been asked to reduce themselves down to a storage unit worth of cardboard boxes. Jason had gone through all of it about six months after Dad died.

Things he gave away included: all their kitchen shit (Cordelia), a box of old magazines (Charlotte), the family photo albums that Dad had taken with him (Mom), and Whizzer's ridiculously expensive and comfortable socks (Mendel).

Things he kept: a shoebox of Polaroids from weekends in 1981, a neon pink mug with "Hot Stuff" written in gems, several fashionable and not-so-fashionable neckties, a few oil paintings with dicks hidden in the flowers

a bottle of cologne that still smells like Dad

the camera Whizzer swore was gonna make him famous some day

an old red sweatshirt

a leather jacket

The truth, Jason thinks, is that the lawyer was right. This is his inheritance. His inheritance is the ability to get a struggling organization off the ground, to wear Dad's ties to meetings and Whizzer's to funerals, to drink deeply and remain open, to document all the things they are before it all fades away.

His inheritance is a red sweatshirt that hides blood and a leather jacket that acts like armor. Now he just has to prove himself worthy of them.


End file.
